


Dark and Stormy Night

by TheIcyQueen



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Humor, really bad campfire stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-05 01:52:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17315852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheIcyQueen/pseuds/TheIcyQueen
Summary: Not all ghosts rattle chains and shriek in the night. Not all monsters hide under the bed. Not all stories should be told around a campfire.





	Dark and Stormy Night

“And then…he _slooowly_ pushed the door open…and as he walked into the room, they could see it. He had a _HOOK FOR A HAND_!”

Across from him, Axel’s eyebrows were tightly together in bored incredulity. “Seriously?” he asked, tone flat with indifference, “ _That’s_ your story. Hook for a hand. Enlighten me, now, _how_ is that supposed to be scary?”

“Are you _kidding me_??? That’s _terrifying_!” Clearly affronted, Demyx glared from over the makeshift fire pit, lower lip beginning to pooch out into an impetuous pout.

“ _How_?!”

“Because…he can…well, you know…” Curving his index finger into a hook, he proceeded to wave his arm around in a vaguely menacing manner, stabbing and clawing at the air. “ _It’s scary_!” he snapped defensively before groaning and rolling his eyes to the ceiling. “Fine. Whatever. You think _you_ can do better?”

Axel leaned back with a snicker, folding his arms across his chest. “Do I think I could do better…hmm…I’m gonna go with… _duh_. How hard am I even gonna have to try? I’ve scraped scarier stuff off the bottom of my boots than the story you just told.”

“Man, _whatever_.”

Clearing his throat in a theatrical manner, Axel spread his hands out in front of him, fingers casting spindly shadows across the sharp angles of his face. “So there’s this family, right? You know how it is, mom, dad, older daughter, couple a’ snot nosed twerps, the average little lovey dovey unit. And Mom and Dad _love_ having the older kid around because hey, free babysitter. Daughter’s not as excited about that. She’s at that age, you know, where’s she’s kind of a brat. Doesn’t like doing anything that isn’t sitting in her room, messing around, eating, _napping_ …” At that, he reached over, jabbing at Demyx accusatorily with an elbow, earning himself a quick swat and a ‘blah blah blah’ hand motion. “ _Anyway_. Mom and Dad decide they’re going out for a date night, or whatever it is parents call wanting to get away from their kids. ‘Make sure the boys are in bed by ten,’” he said, putting on a ridiculously high and wavery falsetto before pausing, “Did I mention the younger two were boys? They were. Not crazy important to the story but. There you go.”

Cheek resting on his hand, Demyx grumbled. “Oh yea, this is _crazy_ scarier than my—”

“I’m getting to it, _I’m getting to it_. Sheesh. Kids these days…”

“Aren’t I older than you…?”

“As I was saying. Girl’s stuck babysitting. And you just _know_ she’s pissed. She could be out with her friends, right now, or talking with that cute guy from homeroom, or whatever girls do, I don’t know, watching a romantic movie and crying. But instead she’s stuck making sure her brothers don’t choke on their mac and cheese. So things are normal for most of the night—she gets them fed, they watch some tv, do their homework, yadda yadda. Only now it’s bath time, which is the worst because have you ever tried wrangling two kids into a bathtub?”

“No,” Demyx sighed flatly, still clearly unimpressed, “Have _you_?”

“So she finally gets them to calm down long enough to get into the tub, and they’re splish splashin’ and all that, but she realizes that she forgot to get any towels. _Duh_ , right? She leaves the door open so she can hear them, and goes out into the hall to the linen closet to grab some towels, but then remembers— _UGH_ , she was supposed to get them out of the dryer, earlier. What a bummer. But she can’t just split all the way downstairs while the twerps are taking their bath, cuz what if something happens? Lucky for her, her parents kept the old baby monitors, so she can put one in the bathroom and take the other with her so she can _hear_ if anything’s up. Smart, right?”

“I _guess_.”

“Makes her way down to the laundry room, grabs some towels, figures she might as well fold the rest of ‘em before Mom gets home and yells at her for forgetting. She’s halfway through the load when she hears something weird on the baby monitor. It’s like this low, crackly growling noise. At first she thinks it’s just the family dog, but Fido’s curled up right at her feet, watching her do the laundry. It’s such a _weird_ noise though, and it’s so _loud_ …but her brothers kieep giggling and splashing, so she figures they’re just messing around like kids do. Still, she just goes back upstairs with the towels and gets them out of the tub and dried off.

“She gets them into their pajamas, lets the dog out into the backyard for the night, gets everyone ready for bed. She tucks the boys in, puts their nightlight on, all that good stuff. Finally she’s able to just flop down onto her bed and relax. She turns on the tv and just kinda…” he made a vague, flailing gesture for emphasis, “Sprawls out on the bed, arms and legs hanging over the edge. For a while she just watches her trash talk shows, but then she feels something weird. ‘Fido, what’re you doing?’ she laughs, pulling her foot back from the edge of the bed so the dog’ll stop licking it. But that’s when she remembers—

“The dog’s outside for the night. Her brothers are in the other room, so then what’s—”

Without warning, the fire extinguished with a quiet and unimportant hiss, sending the room into pitch-blackness. They groaned at the inconvenience, momentarily unified by frustration. “ _Relight iiiiit_ ,” Demyx whined, complaint tapering off into an unintelligible moan of displeasure.

“What’s wrong?” Axel sneered, “Scared?”

“ _Hardly_. Oooh there’s a monster under the bed, _licking me_. Yeah. Exactly what nightmares are made of.”

“I wasn’t even _done_ yet!” he snapped, the fire bursting back into life.

There was a third face between them, now, the light flickering wispy shadows across ghoulish, ghostly features, and the two positively _yelped_ , falling from off of their seats and landing flat on the ground.

With a quiet, impatient sigh, Zexion crossed one leg over the other, ignoring Axel and Demyx’s twin looks of terror in favor of staring into the fire. “I wonder if you cretins realize,” he drawled slowly, voice rasped and snarled with interrupted sleep, “That _everyone_ can hear you? Just as I wonder whether or not you have _any_ grasp over _what time it is_.” He inhaled deeply, small shoulders rising like the tide before falling, “Some of us—those of us who _work_ —are attempting to sleep. If you insist upon being idiots, I’ll have to _politely request_ that you move it to a lower floor, so we aren’t woken up every five minutes by your incessant screeching.”

Pulling himself back up into his seat, Demyx frowned, “There _wasn’t_ any screeching, until _you_ showed up…”

Whether it was due to grogginess, or not having fully heard him, Zexion let the quip slide, turning instead to Axel. “I’d also have to request you stop setting things on fire. Those encyclopedias were expensive.”

“We needed a fire pit, and no one was using them,” Axel shrugged, running a hand through the mess of his hair before righting himself. “Can’t tell spooky stories without a fire.” And then, struck with an idea, “ _Heyyy_ …why don’t _you_ stick around and tell us a story or two, huh Zex—”

“I would prefer you didn’t address me in such a disrespectful manner, _Number VIII_.”

“Yeah!” Demyx piped in, previous pout wiped from his face. “Stay and tell a ghost story! Axel’s was _awful_. But you’re the creepiest guy I know!”

Zexion’s displeasure was _palpable_.

“You’re always lugging around that bigass book,” Axel continued, grinning from ear to ear. “You’ve gotta know _one_ good story. _Especially_ since you’re all doom and gloom, all the time, hiding in the basements and shit. _Come onnn_.”

There was a moment of silence before Zexion spoke again, voice riddled with exhaustion and frustration. “If I do— _if_ —will the both of you stop this stupidity and _stop talking_?”

“Scout’s honor!” Axel smirked, chuckling as Demyx pantomimed running a zipper across his lips.

After another long-suffering sigh, Zexion folded his hands on his lap, returning his gaze to the flames. “I know a ghost story,” he said finally. As he did, the fire flickered blue and white, illuminating the room with icy crackles and exacerbating the gauntness of his cheeks. “But maybe not the sort of ghosts you’re expecting.” He sat quietly for another moment, though his expression remained unreadable. “Once, there was a scientist.”

“A _mad_ scientist?” Demyx asked enthusiastically, “Oh, like Vexen!”

But his comment went unnoticed, or unaddressed, at the very least, and Zexion soldiered on. “He was brilliant, and he was wise, and he was loved by everyone—but by none more so than his pupils. You see, he had a habit of taking strays in off of the streets, misfits who didn’t quite belong anywhere else, and giving them a better life. He was kind, but that kindness would be his undoing, in the end, as it so often is in stories like this.

“One day, a monster appeared in his home. It was a quiet monster, and weak and confused, and so he did as he had done so many times before. He overlooked the monsters fangs and its claws, and instead offered it a home and a helping hand. Perhaps he thought nursing it back to health would open its eyes and heart to the error of its ways, who’s to say. But every day the monster grew bigger and stronger and smarter. It became very good at smiling and speaking in pleasing tones, and before long, it was just as loved as the scientist was. Even by his pupils.

“Now in the beginning, this was all fine and good because the monster was too weak to do much of anything, save for what the scientist asked of him. But slowly, things began to change. _Very_ slowly, you see, because that is how monsters tend to work. It took its time, infecting one and then another, and another, and yet another still, until it had spread its infection to all of the scientist’s students. Its claws were sharp, but its tongue was sharper, and while slow-moving, its poison was fast-acting. When they fell, they all fell _at once_.”

Had he been inclined to pay them any mind, Zexion would’ve noticed that both of the others had gone entirely silent, by that point, brows furrowed and bodies unconsciously leaning closer to the fire. The timbre of his voice filled the room while remaining so very _soft_ , and the goosebumps tearing their way up and down their arms were hardly due from cold. Somehow, the story rang uncannily familiar in the back of their skulls, at the periphery of their memory, just as Zexion had known it would.

But he’d yet to get to the ghosts.

“The scientist began noticing things—strange things. His pupils would avoid his eyes in the halls, their voices dropped to whispers when he neared them, the usual smell of soap and sunshine in their rooms had been replaced with lye and old copper. When he found out, he found out far too late.

“He wandered into the basements one night, intrigued by a strange noise carrying through the pipes. What he found…well. It was difficult to say, really, so massive were the piles of rot, so heavy was the stench of death, so deep the pools of blood. The monster—his weak, shaken little monster—had grown and _spread_. Instead of one, now there were _six_ , and they were so, _so_ hungry. Suddenly it made sense, all of the stories in the newspapers, the pictures tacked to walls and doors, the pleas of grieving family. They devoured any and everything in their path, reaching into ribcages with crooked claws and pulling out those organs still pumping blood. They needed it, they _wanted_ it. And so they had it.”

He paused, though whether for emphasis or to rest his voice, it was difficult to tell. “But it was _ghosts_ you were interested in, wasn’t it? I suppose that’s where this leads. The scientist was destroyed by the monsters—his _monsters_. He was wise and kind and clever, but he stood no chance against them all, with their claws and fangs and thirst for blood. And the monsters reveled in their newfound freedom. But monsters, as I’m sure you know, are not terribly trustworthy. Their euphoria was short-lived, and before long, they had all met their ends at the hands of the first: now so strong and large and hungry.

“Monsters aren't humans, though, if only in definition, and they do not _die_ like humans. They awoke some time later, leaner and angrier and _ravenous_. They were wounded, but no longer bled. They were blind, but knew no fear. They remembered everything, but _felt_ nothing. They had shed their skins and donned their shackles, cursed now to wander through the night, through the dark.

“When they sniffed something out in the night, they pounced and they fed, blood running down their throats and through their fingers. But nothing would ever satiate their hunger, nothing could ever fill the swirling black emptiness behind their ribs, nothing could echo the pulses that had faded out so long ago. But they tried, and tried, and _tried_. Even knowing full well that there would and _could_ be no relief. No balm from their self-imposed hell. They would starve and go wanting until the end of time itself.”

The fire flickered, as though serving as punctuation, before sputtering out with a quiet gasp of a dying breath. When it burst back to life, all warm reds and oranges and snapping book bindings, Zexion’s spot was vacant, the room full of only Axel and Demyx’s shadows. They sat in silence, glancing at one another from over the flames.

“…what. A. _Downer_.” Demyx shook his head as he took to his feet. “That guy is _so depressing_. Why did we even _invite_ him?”

Axel pulled a face as the lights clicked back on, taking it upon himself to douse the fire pit once and for all. “…it was _still_ better than yours.”

**Author's Note:**

> Reupload from 10/3/14.


End file.
